When,Does,the,Web,Come,Poor,am DIY When Does the Web Come to the Poor?

When starting a new work at home business it is very easy to become consumed by it. We spend so much time trying to get the business up and running that we may end up becoming burned out and lose our motivation. There is so much to learn and Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;mso-style-noshow:yes;mso-style-parent:"";mso-padding-alt:0in

I heard Larry Irving speak recently on the "Digital Divide,"a term he coined while working in the Clinton Administration.Irving makes a compelling case for the inaccessibility of theweb to the poor. He emphatically demonstrates that businessis ignoring a huge market when they ignore those withoutaccess to the web. That means that anyone without a computerright now and those numbers can reach up to 85% of the poor.That is not just those who can't afford computers, becausemany work where there is no online access. This would includeemployees of all kinds on factory floors and in warehouseoperations, food service workers and blue-collar employees.Even the "Digital Divide" will (eventually) be overcomeby publicly accessible kiosk web terminals or web enabledautomobiles, web-connected televisions and the webencompassing every aspect of our lives. I believe thatthere will come a time in the near future when businesscan no longer afford to ignore those who don't owncomputers. Although the necessary public accesscomputers will inevitably come in the form of limitedaccess to specific sites at first, I am certain thatyou'll be able to buy stuff online from anywhere, andthat we can find ways to make that service pay handsomelyfor those businesses making web sales via those public webterminals.Marketing rep Barry Baker of KDS Pixeltouch, a manufacturerof on-site touch screen kiosk solutions, was rathernegative about the idea that publicly accessible webterminals were coming anytime soon. Although he valiantlystruggled to brainstorm as we spoke on how such a scenariomight play out. Even folks acting as a driving forcebehind touch screen kiosk use failed to offer anysignificant ideas for using their own product for webaccess in public places. I'd suggest they hire someone todevelop a public web access kiosk of some type if he is oneof those hoping for overnight riches, because when it takesoff, riches are inevitable. He readily sites more mundaneuses such as the standard trade show display, store productlocators and giant discount warehouse product mapping. Even Walmart auto parts lookups were mentioned. But that ishandled currently by smaller, purpose built electronic partlisting sort of calculators in each section. One for wipers,one for car batteries, one for oil filters. Those are allwell and good, but why not have a central server with kioskterminals throughout the store, each programmed to providejust the information in each section? Some terminals couldprovide home-improvement presentations in flash from the web. An example of this type of central presentation server wasdemonstrated by Mark Jarvis, Chief Marketing Officer forOracle Corporation. He prominently featured it in his keynotespeech for Streaming Media West in Los Angeles. Althoughthe display technology in this case was poster-sized kioskswhich Jarvis said replaced $40k of spending on posters eachand every year for the giant company across their enterprise.The benefit, he said was in having central servers streamingappropriate content worldwide. On returning from the airport,I drove by an Oracle Corporation building aside the freewayin Silicon Valley with a billboard sized version on display.Clearly this type of technology requires large up-frontinvestment and development costs, but it will become moreaffordable and accessible to the public in approachable andrealistic form on a human scale. The question is not so much how, but when? Adding functionality and choice tothose public web terminals to make them interactive is theremaining hurdle.There are few cases where public web access can be providedfree without significant filtering of content or absolutecontrol of web destinations on publicly accessible kiosks.One can imagine good reasons for limiting access and limitinguser time on kiosk computers, but I'm still convinced thatit's the first way that those without web access will gaina view of this world that has been entirely denied to thembefore now. The first use of public web kiosk computers thatdoes become poppular enough to succeed will be dramatic forany organization, including government in public places. Idon't know when, but I predict that it will arrive in somedramatic form, somewhere within the next five years.This sweeping change is coming in banking and commerce, ingovernment, philanthropy, academia and even many personalinteractions. I see a place for helping the world tounderstand how this change affects the broad majority ofthe public, small business and the vast middle ground --the rest of us. The industry talks about how BIG business,BIG finance and BIG government is moving toward total webadoption, but this affects the rest of the world too.Because business, government and finance is "moving online"it means that instant access to every aspect of ourwill be available to everyone via the web. Article Tags: Publicly Accessible